Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries

Allen Barra is back with Brushbacks and Knockdowns, his newest retrospective of baseball history and folklore. Risking barroom riots, his essays question, "Who was a better hitter, Babe Ruth or Barry Bonds?," "Who is the best player not in the Hall of Fame?," "Who was the most valuable team player in baseball history?" (Hint: His name rhymes with "Yogi"), and "Is baseball's talent pool shrinking?"

And for the first time, Allen Barra will make some projections on the greatest players and most innovative new trends in the first half of the twenty-first century. He uses statistics to give decisive answers to "Who's Right, The Owners or The Players?" He also addresses the issue of steroids in baseball---how they undermine statistics and the fan's faith in the integrity of the statistics that have been the game's lifeline for more than a century.

In Brushbacks and Knockdowns, Barra takes on baseball's toughest arguments. Readers will never think about baseball's greatest stars, situations, and matchups in the same way again.

Allen Barra has written for The Wall Street Journal since 1995 and has been a regular contributor to The New York Times for more than fifteen years. He also writes for "The Sports Nut" on Slate.com and is a regular on NPR. He lives in South Orange, New Jersey.